Don't feel bad..... We had snow too.

Well after the pictures we recieved this morning and two or three emails I thought that I had better write and let you all know that you shouldn't feel bad because we also had snow last night. The picture above this shows the top of the Benmore Range with all of the fun white stuff on top.

I also found that living in New Zealand there is alot to be said for Drip coffee. This is something that alot of North Americans take for granted. I have been around to alot of shops, and people's home's and coffee is either instant coffee, or is an expensive made espresso or long coffee shot. So the other day while waiting for the bank to open we went to a small cafe and I found they had a drip coffee maker. So anyone who knows me would understand my sheer enthusiasm towards the cafe owner for having such a luxurious item. I just had to take a picture of the momentus occasion of my first cup of drip coffee since I left Canada. It's quite amusing actually that the t-shirt Karl bought for me that says "Gimme my Timmies and no one gets hurt" Not a single person understands here. They all ask what a Timmies is.And although I said that we got snow this morning I can't lead you all on any further. The tips of the hills got a bunch of snow but the ground here is still quite green and happy looking. So I hope that the green will bring a bit of a smile to your day.

This morning however was a very nice view. Directly over the airfield was an enormous wave cloud. If you had been trying for a 1000km or 2000km flight and needed an early start it would have been a perfect day for it. this afternoon would be a bit tougher though as there is some blue wave about. Which is wave action without the key lenticulars showing you where to go.

Other than the normal goings on the flying is still a bit slow, but is definetly picking up. I can't wait to use Don Mallinson's LS4 and go play in the wave. He's offered us the use of his glider whenever we would like.

Love you all, miss you lots

Dixie Chicks

I have surfed my way onto a great website people
http://myspace.com/shutupandsing
It is a documentary the Dixie Chicks made about how they were treated when they made a comment about Bush...
The major american tv stations will not run their ad for it, and now it has taken off and is HUGE.
Check it out... it's knowledge if nothing else.

Wanaka...

This place is beautiful. Melissa, you need to come here. It is like Canmore, where the locals just wander around downtown and chat, but with more palm-like trees. The view is gorgeous and the lake is so blue. Snow capped mountains in the back, unfortunately for the ski bums the season is ending right now.

Went to the NZAF museum. Did you know that New Zealand had more people per capita participating in the armed forces in The Battle of Britain than any other country? Seriously!? Tons of pilots too, most did their training in Canada. Very cool museum and Ryan and I spent about 2 hours there. Looking at a bunch of war birds (that still work and can be rented for movies and commercials...) and reading about the NZ men of the forces. Fantastic setup and musuem, people should be touring NZ and hitting up places like this! And it is on the Wanaka airfield, so you're not sure if the airplane noises are from the museum sound system or the runway...

Also went to Puzzling world. There are illusions galore, with the room that is tilted... it messes with your brain for sure... and a room to make the person on the left look big and the person on the right look wee... think LOTR. There is also a huge maze outside that took us 30 minutes to navigate. There are 4 towers, each in a corner, and we have to get ourselves to each one and then back to the start. Not as easy as it sounds, and I found myself saying "I think I've made a huge mistake" a couple times.

The drive was gorgeous as usual, and after a small snag (we found ourselves where the road ended... then had to turn around to find it again...) we got home and unloaded groceries.

$1.50 petrol, and that is cheap compared to Omarama, so day trips are dear. (That is an ism, nothing here is expensive...)

-B

The ASH 25... the glider that frowns when it lands...

This is totally not going to do this flight any justice.

As a pilot from the prairie region, I see water and fields. And more more water and more fields.
THIS on the other hand is something totally different.

Flying with Don M in his Ash 25 is like, well, think of whatever car you think is the nicest, fastest, most up to date and gorgeous vehicle you have ever set eyes on... now climb into it and play in it for 2 hours. It was like that, but cooler.

We took off at 2:15 in the afternoon, and holy cow was I in for it. ROCKS. Seriously, they are RIGHT THERE. And you are TRYING to get CLOSER to them. Does that sound wrong to anyone else? I pretty much got to where I thought was too close, then kept pointed straight at them for another ONE TWO THREE and then turned. And apparently I am still a bit shy of them. INSANE.

Don was very fantastic, telling me everything he could think of, making my bucket overflow in about 10 minutes. Heck, the takeoff pretty much filled it!

All in all, this flight was a fantastic intro to this kind of flying, something that the cadets here (who have been doing training all this weekend) take totally for granted.

The race to learn has begun, and every answer provides another 10 questions, and no amount of practice is enough.

Oh, and the frowning comment, the Ash's ailerons point up to get better performance at slower speeds... like landing... making the wing tips push down. You can't see them from the cockpit, and I am guessing that from the front, it is one unhappy looking glider...

Specs on the ASH 25

Span = 25M (82ft. !!!)
Vne = 145kts (?) ( 265km/h )
Glide Ratio = 60:1

(pictures to follow soon)

STROKE: Remember The 1st Three Letters... S.T.R

If everyone can remember something this simple, we could save some folks.

STROKE IDENTIFICATION:
During a BBQ, a friend stumbled and took a little fall - she assured everyone that she was fine (they offered to call paramedics) and just tripped over a brick because of her new shoes. They got her cleaned up and got her a new plate of food - while she appeared a bit shaken up, Ingrid went about enjoying herself the rest of the evening. Ingrid's husband called later telling everyone that his wife had been taken to the hospital - (at 6:00pm , Ingrid passed away.) She had suffered a stroke at the BBQ. Had they known how to identify the signs of a stroke, perhaps Ingrid would be with us today. Some don't die. They end up in a helpless, hopeless condition instead. It only takes a minute to read this...

A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within 3 hours he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke...totally. He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed, and then getting the patient medically cared for within 3 hours, which is tough...


RECOGNIZING A STROKE -

Thank God for the sense to remember the "3" steps, STR .
Read and Learn..! Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster. The stroke victim may suffer severe brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke...

Now, doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:

S * Ask the individual to SMILE .
T * Ask the person to TALK to SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently) ( i.e. . . It is sunny out today).
R * Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS .
If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks then it is an indication of a stroke...

NOTE: Another 'sign' of a stroke is this: Ask the person to 'stick' out their tongue. If the tongue is 'crooked', if it goes to one side or the other that is also an indication of a stroke.

Clay Cliffs and 4WD Tracks

Well, Wednesday saw us off on another adventure. This day was a trip around to some of the local attractions. Our First stop was the clay cliffs just a few km's to the West of the airfield. Flying above them is quite impressive all on it's own, however actually climbing up into the heart of them is another adventure all on it's own. They were absoluetly beautiful and the picture here does them absolutely no justice.

From the Clay Cliffs we decided on taking a drive around Lake Ohau ( Oh - How ). Lake Ohau is roughly 20 km's from Omarama. The color of the lake is just stunning as it's fed from two rivers that are both glacial type rivers. Along the way we found a few places that looked like you could get food and or gas from them however, they were all closed as the season is still getting up to speed around here. Our little drive also found us off of the beaten track a little bit and we found ourselves crossing a Ford or Fjord. So our little lancer car has done us quite proud by crossing such items as if it were made for such things. It seems some of the most stunning scenery in this country is found off of the beaten path.

The last picture I will leave you with is a picture of what we call a cap cloud. These clouds mark the tops of mountain waves, which we as glider pilots love to see. If you look closely at this one along the bottom you can almost see the shape of the cloud matches the shape of the mountain peaks.

So that's all for now from Omarama. Today the wind has already reached 20G30 knots ( 37 gusting 56 km/h) and a passenger aircraft that always calls our base for gliding activity has told us the winds at 22,000ft are blowing at 82 kts (143km/h) So I'm sure it is going to get even windier along the ground today. Good thing for us we have already completed a few flights for the day.

Cheers, love you all and miss you lots

Oh yes and another kiwi-ism for you. They call them cattle stops, not gaurds, or texas gates.

Ryan and Britt

Fun and Sun, to Relaxing Rain

(The view from 7000ft over Mt. Horrible looking down at Omarama)

Hey all.

Well here we sit on a rainy sunday morning. It's nice to have a bit of a slow down day. Yesterday we were flat out with what we endearingly refer to as 'punter' rides. Which are passenger rides. I did two trips in the Twin Astir. One an hour long and the second was a 30 minute trip. It was really quite and easy day for it as we had very strong westerly winds, creating amazing ridge lift. Marc flew three missions in the Duo Discus totalling 2.5 hrs. So overall it was a very good day.
(An interesting rotor cloud over the airfield. It was moving from left to right and then down and then back towards it's tail)

The next few days however are going to be quite bleary it seems that a big front will be coming through later today causing us some more rain and possibly snow down to the valley floor. We have had that once already here but it didn't last more than about 5 minutes until it turned to rain again.

We will probably be taking another day trip again this week so we will post more as we do some more exploring.

Cheers, for now
Ryan and Britt

( This morning at the airfield with a slight break in the rain and cloud. Big Ben Range in behind the clouds.)

13000 Ft and a Day trip to Oamaru

Well I'm not entirely sure what to say other than wow. I went for my final flight test on the Twin Astir. Called a BFR or Basic Flight Rating. Which turned into a very hard work trip of 3.5 hrs and 13,200 ft.











( If you click this image to enlarge it, and look closely you can see us going up at 2 kts, 105 kts airspeed and 13,000ft)





The first few hours was spent scratching around below 8000 ft, mostly thermal lift and a few bits of hard earned ridge lift in the wonderful mountains around Omarama here.


( This image is just coming into and area called hugo's elevator. The ridge worked very well here. This was taken at around 6000 ft and we gained around 1500 ft on the ridge.)








The last bit of our flight paid off however as we finally had stayed up long enough that Wave managed to set itself up and we finally hooked into it around 8700 ft. I quickly learned what all the commotion is about this wave thing as we quickly found ourselves rocketing up to 13,200 ft, and we still were getting around 8-10 kts up ( 800 - 1000 ft/min) Unfortunately we were not oxygen equiped so we couldn't keep going higher. On the same note though, it is amazing to be blasting around the sky in a glider with no motor at 100-115kts at 13,000ft and staying level. It was amazing to say the least.



( Open this image and save it as an amazing background. This is 13,000 feet NW of Omarama looking west, oh yeah and -10C)







And Yesterday, Britt and I took a day trip to a place called Oamaru. For those of you following along on the map, that is straight east of Omarama about 105 km. Along the way we saw some amazing sights. Benmore Dam, Aviemore Dam, a beautiful hiking trail and some Maori Cave Drawings. As we got closer to Oamaru we were also priveleged to see some of the landscape that they used for the movie "The Chronicles of Narnia" which was absolutely amazing. We will post some pictures here however there are far to many to put up here alone.

Once In Oamaru we went for a walk along a Tramping Trail ( hiking ) which overlooked the coast. Absolutely breathtaking. The last part of our evening saw us in a very interesting sitting theatre and just as dusk rolled along, We witnessed 195 little blue penguins coming out of the Ocean and into there nesting burrows. Unfortunately we have no pictures of this as it's a conservation area and we were not allowed cameras.

(The Lancer overlooking Oamaru and the Coast)

Once home we found that we missed a very interesting soaring day that saw Our CFI, Chris and our Equipment manager, Rod in the Wave in the Duo with a ground speed of 180 kts or 330 km/h. They had an 80 kt tail wind to get that.

So for now that is all the adventure we have to offer but today promises some big winds, So i'm sure that we will have plenty more to come

Cheers, Ryan and Britt

Long Flight...

Ryan was up for three and a half hours today...
He'll have to blog about it tommorrow...

SNOW! SWEET!

Rained for like 6 hours last night, thunder and lightening and all, but we woke up to SNOW on the mountain tops. Seriously folks, watch LOTR and that is where we are. It is surreal to see the snow on the mountain tops and the perfect line where it changes to the lush green of spring.
Went out to Twizel (long I) to pay for our new car and had dinner at the Korner Kafe, where the lady who sold us our car works. I have never had chicken satay like that... I seriously need to send some of it home, or steal the sauce recipe! PHENOM! Went to Roseann and Malcolm's for drinks after that and had a lovely time. Roseann is the extraordinary paperwork woman that I am going to try and live up to, and Malcolm is our top tow pilot. Wonderful people... and Roseann is apparently going to teach me to make a new dessert that Marc seems to come back here every year just to eat!
Hopefully the weather will stay nice today, and the sun coming out may encourage some travellers so that Marc can get his fix of flying. It seems he is content nerding out with his digital camera at the moment, but that may not last long once the wave starts working.

Another day in Elven paradise...

ADDRESSES

right then, anyone who wants something fun, postcards included, needs to leave me their address... probably here, or in an email if need be.

Mom, can I get the Grandma's address's, and Auntie Marj and Uncle Lornes too?

I bought postcards today, so first come first serve for today!

-from the land of upside down light switches...

Pulling out gliders into the sprinklers... and other pics

About 9am on Sunday, pictures from the future! This is MN, the Twin Astir we are flying. Some specs for those of you who want to geek out a bit...
Max speed is 135 knots, 155 mph. Stall speed is 43 knots, 49 knots with airbrakes open. Add 6 knots to stall speed if your wings are wet...
17.5 m wing span, 8.1 m long, 1.6 m high and and aspect ratio of 17:1 hehehehe...

The fantastic garb I am wearing is issued Southern Soaring stuff. Got a white collared shirt and the blue and black windbreaker, and I found myself a white bucket hat in the staff house too. Should get a nice denim shirt as well, but we don't have any small enough for me at the moment. Behing me are the hangars, three big long ones. They open from both sides and the gliders face outwards from them. No moving anyone elses stuff to get yourself out!


Well, we bought a car...
Jay-Rod, you'd be proud... its' a LANCER!!
AND ORANGE!!!

Prize for Vassy!

Ryan V got the checklist! We will russle up a prize for him in the next couple days... from Glenis at the local shop!

Slow day...

No flying today.
Chris has gone up to Christchurch for the weekend, so Ryan and I are the gophers... DI-ing and pushing out the glider. MN sits off the edge of the runway to catch passing tourists, the highway is just past the runway.
Some rain got us a bit around noon, so it went in adn out a couple times.

Looking for a car at the moment, have a line on a Honda Integra, and the eBay-like bid ends Wed. so we will try and a get a look at that. $535 at the moment.

Well, thanks for the comments, Mom- thanks for the cash, I have decided I want a new glider for christmas!!

Hope everyone is having as good a "spring" as we are!

Mom B, send picturse of the puppy! She sounds huge!

Oh, and the pics are now up on the southern soaring site for the staff/team section, so check-it check-it out!

Love you all, Clear skies - Brittany and Ryan

Welcome to Middle Earth

Second day today, yesterday saw us in the glider about an hour off the bus.

Took a bus from Queenstown at about 830 am and took the milk run throught the island up to Omarama. Saw the Subway with the best view in the world (Wanaka) and hit our first traffic jam... of sheep.

Pulled the bags off the bus and we were off, playing with gliders, doing walk arounds and checking out the random areas we will be making home in the next couple days.
After flying last night we headed to the pub for dinner about 7 or 8 and had a bite to eat.

Studied up on some new checks

C
B
S
I
F
T
C
B
E
(pre-takeoff)

money to the person who can figure that one out... HINT, they are BRAKES, not SPOILERS

as well as SUFB (pre landing) and HASEL (a bit different pre spin/spirla/stall)

here today at 9am, spent the morning learning the paperwork end of things and then did a flight this afternoon. Before the flying came the cleaning of the staff car, it's a Honda Shuttle, and it's our airport shuttle... hehehe... as well as learning to drive a quad and how to start the truck... trickier than it sounds. Also took a pic for the website and got all kitted out with our new Southern Saoring gear... pics I'm sure to follow!
The pics and bios should be up by the end of the weekend on the website...


www.soaring.co.nz

GO THERE! DO IT!

well we're having a blast, Ryan is in his element, and Crozier is a GONG SHOW!

love you guys, please leave comments...

-B + R

HOLY CRAP THIS IS INSANE

(Brittany with the Television remote/game controller on 747-400)

Okay, so.

36 hours of travelling and totally missed the 3rd of Oct. Thats right, totally gone,never happened. Spent about 8 hours in LA and about 6 in Auckland, all in all it is 930 pm on tuesday at home... and 430 pm on wednesday here. we got into queenstown a couple hours ago and went for a beer and some pubfood downtown. We looked into a few cars that might be our new mode of transportation for the next 6 months.

(In the descent to Aukland)

So now we sit in Chris's flat, drinking Speights (mmm beer) and geeking out. Myself, Chris and Mark with our laptops out, catching up at home.

Probably going to sleep a bit, have a shower, and then go out.

The adventure starts, and I am halfway between I can't believe we are doing this and I can't believe we didn't do this earlier. GORGEOUS.

Right oh, chocks away, going to let Ryan upload the pics so far...

( Top picture: View from the balcony with beer in Queenstown)

(Bottom picture: Brittany with a huge protected tree in downtown Queenstown)